Question

Fill in the blank with the most suitable articles:
____ King of Scotland saw _____ spider trying to climb up to ____ ceiling of the cave.
a) The, a, the
b) A, a, the
c) No article, a, no article
d) The, a, no article

Answer 1

Hint: Articles a, an and the. “A” is used before words that begin with a consonant. “An” is used before words which begin with a vowel. “The” is used before a proper noun or a specific thing. If there is only one bottle in the room, we say “the” bottle because I am referring to a specific thing.

Complete answer:
The correct answer is option a. We use “the” before “King of Scotland” because every country has only one king. We use “a” before “spider” because it begins with a consonant and because there are many spiders. This spider was just one of the many spiders existing. It was not a specific, special spider. We use “the” before “ceiling” because the cave has only one ceiling so we are being specific.
Option b is wrong every country has one king so “a” King of Scotland implies that there are many kings in Scotland. That is not true and thus incorrect.
Option c is wrong because articles are required both before king and ceiling. Without articles the sentence becomes wrong.
Option d is incorrect because the word “ceiling” needs an article before it. It is to denote that there is only one ceiling in the cave.

Note:
It is not necessary that “the” shall be used only before proper nouns. It can be used before common nouns as well if we have to refer to any specific common noun such as “the ceiling”. Most words need articles before them unless they are a verb.